Nicholas Dobson reports on a Supreme Court ruling on terminating a joint tenancy
“The past,” observed LP Hartley in his successfully filmed 1953 novel, The Go Between, “is a foreign country: they do things differently there”.
Often, perhaps, but not always. For, although legal life was undoubtedly rather different in December 1991, pre-the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA 1998), when the House of Lords handed down its decision in Hammersmith and Fulham LBC v Monk [1992] 1 AC 478, [1992] 1 All ER 1, the Supreme Court recently upheld the principle established in that case.
This was that, where a joint tenancy is periodic and terminable by a notice to quit, the common law rule is that (subject to any contractual term to the contrary) the tenancy will be validly determined by service on the landlord of a notice to quit by only one of the joint tenants.
The recent case in question was Sims v Dacorum Borough Council [2014] UKSC 63, [2014] All ER (D) 126 (Nov), judgment in which was given by Lord Neuberger (with the agreement of Lady Hale, Lord
